Labor premiers and business groups have pushed back against a rise in anti-immigration sentiment, warning the Albanese Government that arbitrary cuts to visa numbers risked damaging the economy and robbing businesses of desperately needed workers. Source: The Guardian.
Amid reports that the Albanese Government is poised to announce a migration crackdown as early as next week, the South Australian leader, Peter Malinauskas, warned of the collateral damage from blaming migrants for issues such as unaffordable homes.
Mr Malinauskas told ABC radio yesterday that the nation and his state have “a massive shortage of almost every trade”, and that migration should be seen as a cure for, rather than the cause of, inadequate housing supply.
“We need to explain that Australia doesn’t really have a migration crisis so much as a housing crisis,” he said.
“If we have a housing crisis, we would do well to focus our skills policy on making sure that we’re bringing in the very workers that we require in the housing construction industry. I need to make sure we’ve got enough electricians to actually build the homes we need for the workers that the state requires.”
Amid alarmist talk of “mass migration”, the Albanese Government is struggling to articulate a policy response to assuage voters’ concerns about high rates of immigration, and in particular the growing number of temporary visa holders.
The Minister for Home Affairs, Tony Burke, confirmed on August 17 that his department was slowing the processing of working holiday visas as Labor attempts to pull every lever available to bring down the net overseas migration figure, which has become a lightning rod for anti-migrant sentiment.
The Liberal leader, Angus Taylor, insisted that immigration numbers “should be capped based on housing supply, and that would mean right now we’d be at 170,000 or less”.
Net overseas migration was nearly 301,000 in 2025, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, versus a pre-Covid average of around 210,000 a year.
But Andrew McKellar, the chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, called for an “urgent reset” of the migration debate, which he said had been reduced to a narrow-minded obsession with net overseas migration figures.
The Victorian Premier, Ben Carroll, described migration as “essential for Victoria’s prosperity and its future”, echoing comments from his West Australian counterpart, Roger Cook, earlier this week.
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Labor premiers join business groups in warning Albanese government over immigration cuts (By Patrick Commins, The Guardian)
